


Expendable

by sugareign



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22231378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugareign/pseuds/sugareign
Summary: At its closest observation, it is nothing abnormal. It’s like every single shield he’s ever seen before.....but Felix has never seen a shield that held more pride in its small frame.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Expendable

Sound sleep was a far off hope that he had not been able to achieve all night. Every time he would adjust and wake with a slow blink, his shadow was there to greet him, with the faint glow of orange from across the room. Leaving it propped on the inner shelves of his desk, it mimics the candle that he's blown out hours ago. It has the boldness to dance and bounce along the pattern of the stone walls, taunting him to turn to it, to give it the attention that it so begs for. Felix has done his best to tune it out and let it burn out, but it never does. In the dark of dawn, it hasn't gone away. It stands to taunt him with the responsibility that hangs over his head with every passing day. It doesn’t give up on it’s reign over his very thoughts, and it hasn’t died down to present itself to yield to Felix’s desires for it to stop.

His professor had passed it along, and it would have been more trouble to not accept it than it would have been to just take it. Truthfully, he would have tossed it out the second story window if he weren't so wary of what could happen to an innocent passerby should they attempt to wield it. Goddess knows the horrors he's already seen of the crestless trying to harness the power of relics. He still can't get the scene to stop playing in the back of his mind late at night when he's exhausted all of his other options of mind numbing thoughts for sleep. 

Felix rolls over in bed to face it, watching as the glow passes over the rise of the shield and flows down to the narrow end of its edge. Then it restarts, and it will continue the same rhythm ten more times before Felix even thinks about moving from his shelter under the covers. Never is he afraid of it. A shield cannot hurt him, and he has no need to fear the outcome of touching it. It favored him, after all. 

Tired fingers push his hair back to flow together as he sits up, pushing stiff blankets down to the foot of his bed to swing his legs over the edge. Clutching the edge of the mattress, he hesitates briefly to stand up. One . . two . . three more times does the shield glaze over itself, only seeming to begin to pulse faster now that he’s moved. Eerie as it is, it doesn’t frighten him. At least it isn’t moving, it’s not twitching with every passing moment and seeming to breathe on its own. No, it is every bit still that he is, frozen in place to narrow his eyes as if to unravel it. Until he finally stands with one step, letting his nightgown dress his legs as he crosses the short distance across the rug.

At its closest observation, it is nothing abnormal. It’s like every single shield he’s ever seen before. The same shape, bigger in size but not too overwhelming to not be carried on one arm. The way it dips below its own surface to cradle its center, to when the smooth beams pass over, it resembles a vague beat of a heart with the level rise. Gleaming over its own personal system of rivers, the same ones that have held the strength of ages, feeding into the core to where it has withstood centuries of heavy blows. Bleeding out and recycling back into the thick veins and the dips of the pattern. It presents as it wants to, and it holds the horrors of war in the nicks and smallest of dents. It presents as a phantom, a reminder of the past, but it also demands to be seen as a beacon. One that can predict the future, and be so confident to control it. It may not be a sword, but Felix has never seen a shield that held more pride in its small frame.

Felix tugs his lips inward with the slight dig of his teeth into his bottom lip before his hands move towards it, grasping the shield at both sides to carefully lift. Even in the darkest parts of the morning, his reflection is visible in the bloom of the surface’s light. The bends acting as quite the mirror to not hesitate to focus on every inch of his face to absorb into it’s memory. He can feel it studying over him. The pulsing of his fingertips on the underside of it making it terribly hard to not feel an overwhelming sense of dread just from holding it.

It’s far too heavy for him to hold. Not the initial weight of the thing -- no, it really is far lighter than he expected it to be. Whether that revelation is from the ease of lift that his muscles have granted him with many things, or if the material is weightless, he’s not certain. The mass of it all is more on the scale of his heart, and how it aches so badly to hold onto it. For really, how many arms has this relic been pulled from after death? How many men and women have held onto it and hoped that it would protect them, and instead carried it to their deaths instead? Yes, the burden of such a shield that has done far more protecting those that did not wield it. Nearly every person to ever have it met an unfortunate fate, but the people behind the shield -- both the relic and the person -- had survived. 

The shield held many years of recollection, flashing and coursing through the surface. In a brief moment, his reflection is not his own. Or rather, it is accompanied by the many versions of himself from the past. The familiarity of him, but the very different faces that plague the cursed metal include those he knows not of recognition. He can see them, and it brings a terrifying revelation that in a way, they can see him, too. They are all tied to one relic, and they have all seen the same horrors. Of how many weapons have hit against it, seeing bloodshed and a battlefield littered with bodies, hearing the final screams of its wielder before the shield lay just as lifeless as the body. 

And Felix can hear them all the while he holds it. It rings in his ears like tolling bells and makes his skin skitter across itself with the new chill of the room. His grip tightens, and he can’t make himself put it down. As if, almost, it forces him to listen. The murmurs of the dead and the whispers of warnings to him to be careful -- how do they know his name? What are they warning him about? He can’t make them quiet down, as they only get louder. They demand to be heard. To be able to have it for himself, the consequence of witnessing every single death before him was imperative. He has to hear the agony, he has to understand it. There is a burden heavier than his heart, he’s found. Having a heart like his has prepared him enough for the weight of the shield.

Was the true relic the shield, or was it the person that held it until their death? Felix doesn’t even think he wants the answer to such a question. Such a thought makes him shudder to think of all of the endings of life he holds in his two hands. Of the very first Fraldarius, of his distant relatives, of his grandfather … of his brother. All the endings that this shield has seen, and yet it still bears the audacity to shine like a glimpse of hope. It still shows itself as important, as something that deserves to be polished and praised, even as its let so many wielders down. 

It didn’t protect his brother. How much could Felix trust it? Would it one day fail to protect him, too? 

Scratch the very thought of it.

“What a fucking joke,” he mutters, running his thumb down the right side of it, and his brows knit to the center of his forehead. It was a joke. It was disgusting to think a measly shield was anything mighty. It did nothing to protect anyone. It was his brother that gave his life. It was his grandfather, his relatives, his ancestor -- not the shield. It deserves no praise from him.

Shields were expendable, and easily replaced. The people, that is. Once Felix was gone .... who then? There was no one else to replace him like he’d so easily replaced his older brother. There were no other spare parts to exchange, there were no more sons to fake the position and fill in the blanks in a large shadow. If he were to die, he doesn’t want a shield to dictate when that should be.

He relieves his arms of the weight, dropping it to the flat of his desk again and wincing slightly as it clatters against the wood. A place where it would stay until he woke again and he could put it somewhere, or put it back in the professor’s care. Felix doesn’t know if he could even lift it again with how numb it’s already made his arms. Both he and the shield know that they weren’t destined for one another.

For he is not the Shield of Faerghus. He doesn’t need a shield to protect him, and he will not be one to protect anyone else. He is Felix Hugo Fraldarius, and he does not need Aegis Shield’s phantom hands dragging him to his grave.


End file.
